Sharing toys — a good trait or a bad one?
Looking at it from a child’s perspective.
My son does not mind sharing his toys with other children. Some say it is such a good trait while others say he needs to be aggressive and not let others take away his toys. Who is right?
I hear mothers complain all the time that their kids do not share their toys. Mine does. Those mothers would describe this as perfect behaviour. But is it worth it? I wonder.
Last evening my son took a new toy when he went to play with his friends. I had half a mind to dissuade him. I had a bad feeling about it. But I held back.
An hour later he was in tears when I opened the door. He stood there looking helpless, holding the broken toy in his hand. His friend had accidently broken the toy. Sadly it could not be fixed.
He could not hold back his tears. The point was he wanted to show his friend the things his new toy could do. He wanted to share some happiness with his friend. But to his utter dismay, his friend broke the toy.
This was not the first time he came back with broken toys. But this was the first time a brand new toy which he had got attached to, so soon, had got broken. It was a brand new toy, which his best friend at school had given him. It was obviously too much for him to take. He wept again and again. I held him close and let him cry.
As parents we eventually told him that crying about something that cannot be mended is pointless. We asked him to exercise caution next time he takes a toy to play with this particular friend. By saying that, we taught him how to judge people based on their personality traits and deal with them accordingly. At some level, I wonder, did we rob him of his childhood innocence? Maybe we did.
I imagine this is what must have transpired in his mind. He liked the toy so much because of two reasons. One it was given by a friend whom he looks upto. So it is very important. Second, the toy is exciting and does so many fascinating things like fly by itself. He had to show it to his friends. It was exciting. All the happiness crashed that moment, when his friend broke the toy. Worse, the friend was not apologetic. Everything seemed to crash down. He tried consoling himself and tried to feel better by telling himself that he can always buy another toy. There is a solution after all to get back all that happiness.
As a parent, I believe that I understood his feelings and felt very sorry for him. My husband and I mulled over the matter and thought maybe we should get another one for him after all but not immediately. That is because we feared that it should not become easy. We should not be sending a message that it is ok to have toys broken as we can always buy another one. We thought he must figure out a way to ensure friends do not break his toys. Easier than done I suppose from a child’s perspective. There is nothing much you can do if this aggressive friend grabs the toy from you and throws it down in anger or does something utterly unpredictable and stupid!
But then exactly two days later a friend at school broke a toy sword which my son was using while practising for an English play. My son took it in his stride and said it is no big deal. I can always buy a new one. That statement set me thinking.
I hold myself responsible for teaching him what is right, what is wrong and the fact that money cannot be wasted. We cannot go on replenishing the same toys every time they get broken. It is important to take care of one’s things.
We have always appreciated his ability to share but worry that many such incidents might just reverse that personality trait. Does that mean we must get him the same toy again as a way of saying that we know how much it meant to him? I surely feel like doing just that. But I can’t help thinking if we are also conveying that it is okay to get things broken or lost because we can always swipe a credit card and make it reappear magically.
After having written out the above paragraphs, it occurs to me that we must have an open discussion with him and let him know that we care and feel bad that he lost his favourite toy. We should let him know that we would be happy to mend this one time, but for practical reasons we cannot mend such situations every single time. It is up to him to be responsible and make sure such an occurrence is not frequent.
As adults, we tend to look at things only from an adult perspective. Many a time it may not occur to us that we could make an open discussion possible. We want to believe that every aspect of his development is under our control. So we see things only from a parent or an adult perspective, which sometimes can be more than one.
As a child, there is only one perspective. His toy is broken and he is feeling sad about it. Since we always tell him that if something goes wrong we must see how it can be fixed, he was trying to do just that by thinking about a replacement. It is as simple as that.
